Five Holy Wounds
[citation needed] According to the accounts of his crucifixion in the Christian gospels, in the course of his Passion, Jesus suffered various wounds, such as those from the crown of thorns and from the scourging at the pillar.
[citation needed] The revival of religious life and the zealous activity of Bernard of Clairvaux and Francis of Assisi in the 12th and 13th centuries, together with the enthusiasm of the Crusaders returning from the Holy Land, gave a rise in devotion to the Passion of Jesus Christ.
In the fourteenth century it was customary in southern Germany to recite fifteen Pater Nosters each day (which thus amounted to 5,475 in the course of a year) in memory of the Holy Wounds.
In some places it was customary to ring a bell at noon on Fridays to remind the faithful to recite five Paters and Aves in honour of the Holy Wounds.
[14][15] Françoise Chambon was born March 6, 1841, to a poor farming family in the village of Croix Rouge, near Chambéry, in Savoy.
As she was attending Good Friday services with her godmother, in the parish church of Lémenc, Françoise saw the crucified Jesus covered in wounds and blood.
The next year the Vatican granted an indulgence to those who said the following prayer, based on her reported visions: "Eternal Father I offer the wounds of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to heal those of our souls.
"[19] She reported that Jesus asked her to unite her sufferings with his in the Rosary of the Holy Wounds as an Act of Reparation for the sins of the world.
[20] This chaplet was approved for the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary in 1912, and was authorized for all Catholic Church by Decree of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on March 23, 1999.
[17] One method of praying the chaplet consists of three prayers that are said on specific portions of the rosary beads as follows:[21] The First Thursdays Devotion, also called the Act of Reparation to the Wounds of Jesus and to the Holy Eucharist, had its origin in the apparitions of Christ at Balazar, Portugal, reported by Alexandrina Maria da Costa in the 20th century.
Participants in the Crusades would often wear the Jerusalem cross, an emblem representing the Holy Wounds; a version is still in use today in the flag of Georgia.
[citation needed] The medieval poem Salve mundi salutare (also known as the Rhythmica oratio) was formerly ascribed to Bonaventure or Bernard of Clairvaux,[24] but now is thought more likely to have been written by the Cistercian abbot Arnulf of Leuven (d. 1250).
His 1680 Membra Jesu Nostri is divided into seven parts, each addressed to a different member of Christ's crucified body: feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and head framed by selected Old Testament verses containing prefigurements.
Translated by Lutheran hymnist Paul Gerhardt, Johann Sebastian Bach arranged the melody and used five stanzas of the hymn in his "St Matthew Passion".
